Friday, April 22, 2016

Keswick's History: Keswick Theology's Rise and Development in an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 3 of 5

While earlier
perfectionist heretics were important, Barabas recognizes that “the Keswick
movement had its [actual] genesis . . . [through] Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pearsall
Smith [and the influence of three of their books, including Mrs. Smith’s] The Record of a Happy Life,”[1]
after “Conferences . . . at Broadlands . . . Oxford . . . [and] Brighton.Robert and Hannah [Smith] were at the very
center of it all.”[2]Barabas provides not the slightest warning
about Mrs. Smith’s poisonous false doctrines, despite repeatedly citing her
book My Spiritual Autobiography: How I
Discovered The Unselfishness of God, which she wrote specifically to turn
people from Christian orthodoxy to heresy, and where her universalist heresy is
blatantly and grossly set forth.[3]In any case, it is clear that “the first
steps . . . [towards] [t]he Keswick Convention . . . owe . . . everything to a
Quaker glass manufacturer from Philadelphia, Robert Pearsall Smith[.]”[4]Mr. Smith “was instrumental, not only in
establishing Keswick as a perennial convention, but also in introducing the
Keswick emphases back into the United States.”[5]Barabas indicates that “[b]oth [the Smiths]
were born and bred Quakers,”[6]
having “always held the Quaker teaching concerning the Inner Light and
passivity.”[7]They brought their Quaker theology and other
distinctive heresies into the Keswick movement, which they founded.

The “new
revelation [of the Keswick theology of sanctification] came to Mrs. Pearsall
Smith about 1867. . . . At first her husband . . . was somewhat frightened . .
. thinking she had gone off into heresy . . . [but then he] came into her
experience when she called his attention to Romans vi. 6.”[8]Unfortunately, Mrs. Smith did not interpret
Romans 6:6 correctly, and she led her husband into an erroneous view of the
verse as well.The erroneous
interpretation of Romans six adopted by Hannah and Robert P. Smith continued to
dominate the Keswick convention for many decades:

In the history of the Keswick Convention,
if one passage of Scripture is to be identified as playing a larger role than
any other, it would have to be Romans chapter 6.Evan Hopkins said at the thirty-first
Convention that no passage of Scripture was more frequently to the fore at Keswick
than this one.Steven Barabas finds
himself not only agreeing with this statement but adding:“It is doubtful whether a Keswick Convention
has ever been held in which one or more speakers did not deal with Romans 6. .
. . There is no understanding of Keswick without an appreciation of the place
accorded by it to this chapter in its whole scheme of sanctification.”The key to this chapter, in the early Keswick
teaching . . . [of] Robert Pearsall Smith and his wife Hannah . . . is verse 6.[9]

The misinterpretation of Mr. and
Mrs. Pearsall Smith “was largely unchallenged from the Keswick platform until
1965 when John Stott gave Bible Readings on Romans 5-8.”[10]It was very easy for the Smiths to
misinterpret Scripture because “[n]either of [the Smiths] had any training in
theology,”[11]
in keeping with their Quaker backgrounds; for example, Hannah Smith
testified:“[A]s a Quaker, I had no
doctrinal teaching . . . I knew literally nothing of theology, and had never
heard any theological terms” since in her youth “no doctrines or dogmas were
ever taught us . . . a creature more utterly ignorant of all so-called
religious truth . . . could hardly be conceived of in these modern times [that
is, in 1902].The whole religious
question for me was simply whether I was good enough to go to heaven, or so
naughty as to deserve hell.”[12]Despite woeful ignorance of theology and an
inability to accurately exegete Scripture, following Hannah’s lead, both Mr.
and Mrs. Smith embraced and began to zealously propagate the doctrines of the
Higher Life that were enshrined in the Keswick movement.

From its
“beginning . . . some of the foremost leaders of the Church attacked [the
Keswick doctrine] as being dangerously heretical.”[13]Indeed, “the opposition the work was
subjected to at the beginning, even from Evangelical clergy,”[14]
was extreme, so that, indeed, the Keswick theology was “looked upon with the
gravest suspicion by those who were considered as the leaders of the
Evangelical section of the Church.”[15]Consequently, “very few Evangelical leaders
ever attended . . . the Keswick Convention . . . which was quite an independent
movement,” since “the
leading Evangelicals held aloof and viewed it with undisguised suspicion.”Rather than attending and supporting Keswick,
evangelicals “openly denounced it as dangerous heresy.”[16]Evangelical
opposition to Keswick was intense because the founders of Keswick seriously
compromised and corrupted or even outright denied the evangel,[17]
the gospel.For example, evangelicals
found unacceptable Hannah W. Smith’s opposition to the sole authority of
Scripture, proclamation of universalism, and rejection of the Pauline doctrine
of justification.Robert, while formally
adopting a weak and wobbly concept of justification by faith for a time, instead
of simply rejecting that core gospel doctrine as he had before, continued to
reject eternal security and tied his Higher Life theology into his opposition
to the preservation of the saints.Warfield
describes the Arminianism inherent in Robert Smith’s argument against
progressive sanctification being incomplete until death, as propounded by Smith
at the Oxford Union Meeting of 1874:

Smith, in the very
same spirit, exhorted his hearers not to put an arbitrary limitation on the
power of God by postponing the completion of their salvation to the end of
their “pilgrimage,” and so virtually attributing to death the sanctifying work
which they ought to find rather in Christ. “Shall not Christ do more for you
than death?” he demands, and then he develops a reductio ad absurdum. We
expect a dying grace by which we shall be really made perfect. How long before
death is the reception of such a grace possible? “An hour? A day? Peradventure
a week? Possibly two or three weeks, if you are very ill? One good man granted
this position until the period of six weeks was reached, but then said that
more than six weeks of such living” — that is, of course, living in entire
consecration and full trust, with its accompanying “victory”—“was utterly
impossible!” “Are your views as to the limitations of dying grace,” he
inquires, “only less absurd because less definite?” The absurdity lies,
however, only in the assumption of this “dying grace” . . . Smith describes it
as “a state of complete trust to be arrived at, but not until death.” The
Scriptures know of no such thing; they demand complete trust from all alike, as
the very first step of the conscious Christian life. It finds its real source
in the Arminian notion that our salvation depends on our momentary state of
mind and will at that particular moment. Whether we are ultimately saved or not
will depend, then, on whether death catches us in a state of grace or fallen
from grace. Our eternal future, thus, hangs quite absolutely on the state of
mind we happen (happen is the right word here) to be in at the moment of death:
nothing behind this momentary state of mind can come into direct consideration.
This absurd over-estimate of the importance of the moment of dying is the
direct consequence of the rejection of the Bible doctrine of Perseverance and
the substitution for it of a doctrine of Perfection as the meaning of Christ
being our Saviour to the uttermost. The real meaning of this great declaration
is just that to trust in Jesus is to trust in One who is able and willing and
sure to save to the uttermost — to the uttermost limit of the progress of
salvation. Death in this conception of the saving Christ loses the factitious
significance which has been given to it. Our momentary state of mind at the
moment of death is of no more importance than our momentary state of mind at
any other instant. We do not rest on our state of mind, but on Christ, and all
that is important is that we are “in Christ Jesus.” He is able to save to the
uttermost, and faithful is He that calls us, who also will do it. He does it in
His own way, of course; and that way is by process—whom He calls He justifies,
and whom He justifies He glorifies. He does it; and therefore we know
that our glorification is as safe in His hands as is any other step of our salvation.
To be progressively saved is, of course, to postpone the completion of our
salvation to the end of the process. Expecting the end of the process only at
the time appointed for it is no limitation upon the power of the Saviour; and
looking upon death as the close of the process is a very different thing from
looking upon death as a Saviour.[18]

Hannah W.
Smith also believed, at least for a while, that Christ was the “redeemer . . .
from past sins” who will only “redeem . . . from all future sins . . . if [one]
will . . . submit . . . wholly to Him,”[19]
a clear anti-eternal security position.However, since she had become a universalist before becoming a Keswick
preacher, denying eternal security had became largely a moot point for
her.Since Robert and Hannah Smith held
extremely compromised views of the gospel, and Hannah even avowed, “I cannot enjoy close contact with [those
who] . . . preac[h] . . . a pure gospel,”[20]
it was not surprising that those who loved the true and pure gospel violently
opposed the Keswick movement.

Furthermore,
Christian evangelicals, recognizing the command of the Great Commission to
preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15), objected to the fact that
“Robert . . . did not try to convert unbelievers; his call[,] [he believed,] was
to [preach] a state of Holiness in those who already believed, whatever their
creed.”[21]What is more, both Robert and Hannah Smith
“belie[ved] in the inner light [doctrine of Quakerism,] to which they [were] .
. . united in sentiment. . . . Mr. P. Smith [and his wife’s writings] embod[y]
the mysticism of Madame Guyon and the medieval mystics, as well as the
semi-Pelagianism of Professor Upham.”[22]Consequently, both Mr. and Mrs. Smith
rejected the evangelical fundamental, sola
Scriptura—Robert, for example, proclaimed:“I get one half of my theology from the Bible, and the other half by
watching my children,” citing “Coleridge” as support for this astonishing
affirmation.[23]Both the Smiths also anticipated Word of
Faith heresies.[24]The demonism and spiritualism of the
Mount-Temples and their influence on the Smiths and Keswick through the
Broadlands Conferences also constituted a matter of grave concern.Thus, evangelical rejection of Keswick
theology was entirely natural.Nevertheless, despite vociferous and continuing evangelical opposition, Barabas
indicates that both Mr. and Mrs. Smith began to preach to large audiences a
“doctrine of sanctification by faith [alone that had been] allowed to lie
dormant for centuries, unknown and unappreciated . . . it remained for Keswick
to call the attention of the Church to it.”[25]

One
must not confuse Mrs. Smith’s memoir of her son Frank, who died at eighteen
years of age (cf. pgs. 33-37, Remarkable
Relations, by Barbara Strachey), entitled The Record of a Happy Life (New York, 1873), with Mrs. Smith’s
classic statement of Higher Life doctrine, The
Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life (Boston, 1875; often reprinted).One hopes that Barabas has not done so but
has simply cited Mrs. Smith’s far less influential biography of her son for
some reason instead of her far more influential Keswick classic.Both works do contain Higher Life theology.

[2]Pg. 13, Religious
Fanaticism, Strachey.

[3]Pgs.
17-18, So Great Salvation,
Barabas.Compare the discussion of
Hannah W. Smith and her writings above.

[10]Pg. 234, Transforming Keswick:The Keswick Convention, Past, Present, and
Future, Price & Randall.“Increasingly, the teaching at Keswick in the later decades of the
twentieth century would owe more to traditional Reformed thinking about
sanctification as a process than to Keswick’s nineteenth-century and earlier
twentieth-century views . . . [t]he change in emphasis can be traced by looking
at the way in which expositions of the letter to the Romans were given” (pg.
80, Transforming Keswick:The Keswick Convention, Past, Present, and
Future, Price & Randall).

[15]Pg. 162, Memoir of
T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford.The specific reference in the quotation is to the leaders of evangelical
Anglicanism.However, English
nonconformity opposed Keswick even more strongly than the evangelical Anglicans
opposed it.

[18]Chapter 4, “The Higher Life
Movement,” in Perfectionism, Vol. 2,
B. B. Warfield; see pgs. 55-57,Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness,
Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago:Revell, 1874.

[19]Journal, April 7, 1852,
reproduced in the entry for January 12 of The
Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter.

[22]Pg. 102, “The Brighton Convention and Its Opponents.” London Quarterly Review, October 1875.

[23]Pg. 118, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago:Revell, 1874.Likewise, Hannah W. Smith preached at the Broadlands Conference:“I have learnt to know God in my nursery with
my children on my lap” (pg. 222, The Life that is Life Indeed:Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson.London:James Nisbet & Co, 1910.).

[24]For example, Robert preached at the Oxford
Convention:“[B]esure to say [Christian
language] aloud—there is marvelous power reflected by thoughts put into
spoken words.Keep on saying [such
language], even when the heart rebels” (pg. 221, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness,
Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago:Revell, 1874; cf. pg. 42). Hannah similarly
advised:“[I]f thee continually talks of
thyself as being old, thee may perhaps bring on some of the infirmities of age”
(pg. 187, A Religious Rebel:The Letters of “H. W. S,” ed. Logan
Pearsall Smith, reproducing Letter to her
Daughter, Mary Berreneson, March 5, 1907).

[25]Pg. 107, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.Barabas
qualifies his admission that the Keswick doctrine of sanctification was unknown
for centuries with the statement “except by a few isolated Christians,” since
to admit that the Keswick doctrine was unknown to the church of God for over
1800 years would lead to severe doubts about its character.None of these alleged “few isolated
Christians” who believed in the Keswick doctrine before the latter portion of
the nineteenth century are named, nor do they appear to have provided any
written evidence that they ever existed, unless Barabas views idolators like
Upham as Christian Keswick advocates and refers to them.

It should also be noted that it is more appropriate to
denominate the distinctively Keswick position “sanctification by faith alone”
rather than simply “sanctification by faith.”The necessity of faith for growth in holiness is non-controversial among
Bible-believing Christians.

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